Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Wolverine Goes to Hell TPB

Jason Aaron continues his run on Wolverine with a new #1, and things sort of keep on trucking. I’m not sure this holds up quite as well as the last few trades featuring the Adamantium Men or Deathlok, but overall, Aaron still has a pretty good take on Logan.

The book kicks off in the middle of the story, with Wolverine’s body wreaking havoc in the real world while his soul gets tortured down in hell. I enjoyed Aaron’s hell, a rocky, barren place with lots of dead folks in cages and some mighty big demons and devils talking constant smack. Wolvie’s buddy Puck from Alpha Flight shows up, and you know how nice it is to see a familiar face. (Wraith shows up too, but I swear he was already dead!)

I was thrilled to play spot the villain with the hordes of dead guys going after Wolverine in hell. Sabretooth, Omega Red, legions of Hydra agents, Hand ninjas, I spotted the samurai from Frank Miller’s limited and the White Ghost (I think) from Warrant Ellis’ brief run with Wolvie. Another very old character from Logan’s past shows up, but that hits more an emotional level than a physical one.

I was all ready to complain about Silver Samurai showing up in hell to warn Wolvie of the troubles his friends were facing on the surface. As long-time readers of my blog know, my pet peeve is killing off established characters just to establish your new big bad. I’m fine with it if the writer is willing to put in the work to make me care about the dying character, but it is really lazy when the writer just picks a name off a list so that he can have a bloody costume in his book. Silver Samurai MIGHT be in this situation, but I saw some upcoming solicits that makes it seem like he might be back. I’ll hold off my annoyance for now!

Renato Guedes’ art is interesting, if a bit inconsistent. He has a tendency to draw lumpy faces, mostly on the guys. His Mystique looks great, and the demon designs are strong too. I’m not sold on the new band of Marauders yet, they are almost cool, but each of them has something that puts them too far over the top into ridiculousness (like the blades on Gunhawk’s revolvers).